1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for adaptive optics and, more particularly, to a simple adaptive optical system for correcting wavefront distortions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Members of the astronomy community and other telescope users require undistorted telescopic wavefronts for accurate experimentation and measurement. Wavefront distortion results from imperfect telescope optical quality and atmospheric turbulence. The current method of reducing such distortion is through adaptive optical sensing and correction.
Typically, a system comprised of a nineteen channel deformable mirror, a thirty channel Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor, a planar two-axis, tip/tilt mirror, and a high-speed computer is used for correcting wavefront nonuniformities. The computer in this system is used for correcting wavefront nonuniformities. The computer in this system is used to provide real-time feedback from the sensor to the two adjustable mirrors. Although this system is both accurate and fairly reliable, it is complex and extremely expensive. Therefore, to alleviate the burden of the cost of such a complex system a simple means of providing distortion correction on incoming telescopic wavefronts is highly desirable.